Every time I travel outside the U.S., I'm reminded that learning is fundamentally about access and motivation—access to information and the motivation to process it and do something with it. For many kids across the globe, access is the bottleneck, though this is certainly changing rapidly.

Yet, per my last blog post, most kids in the U.S. today now have more access to information an any generation previously --- often never further away than the smart phone in their pocket. Thus, I'd like to draw our attention to the motivation bottleneck in the U.S.

The reality for many American kids is that the longer they are educated, the less motivated they become. Gallup's work on student engagement shows that this alarming decline often begins in the middle school years.

At WonderLab, we believe that this is largely a result of an education approach and system that focuses on the transfer of knowledge, as opposed to the ignition of motivation.

That's why we are focused on what we believe are the three pillars of 21st century learning: motivation, skills and knowledge --- in that order. That's right. We're flipping the traditional approach on its head. We ignite motivation in Learners, which propels them to develop skills and knowledge around their passions.

So what are you passionate about? What will motivate you to love learning? Each of us has a unique answer. My sincere hope is that this post might motivate you to visit WonderLab and find yours.﻿